During the 2013 season of the Valley of the Kings
Project, one of the oldest portable sundials (over 3500 years old) was
discovered in a sarcophagus containing the mummy of a woman named Nehemes Babu.
The small sundial is made of limestone, engraved
with a semicircle marked out by twelve divisions painted with black lines. There
is a hole in the center that is presumed to have served as the fixing point for
a wooden or metal pin, whose shadow would have marked out the hours. Archaeologists
on the project surmise that the sundial served to measure the working hours
during the day since it was found near the huts of those suspected to have
constructed the tomb in the 13th century BCE.
However, the positioning of the Sun was also
considered a key aspect in the guiding those whom had passed to the afterlife,
as recorded on the walls of the royal tombs. Could the newly discovered sundial
been a visual map to the afterlife left to guide Nehemes Babu or was it simply
a time piece meant to keep the tomb builders on schedule?
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